And now we have legislative attempts to politicize the teaching of history….

Eric,

I think you view on the subject is spot on. This is just an attempt to preach “American Exceptionalism”. While we can offer up examples of American Exceptionalism, we can also offer up examples where we fell short and those should be taught side by side in my opinion.

If I remember right Kevin Levin and Richard Williams from Old Virginia Blog argued the idea of American Exceptionalism in the past…might be something you want to look into.

Corey

Education as stated is teaching how, not what to think. These boys probably miss the Alien and Sedition Acts too.

Regards,
Dennis

From the comments of some of the “liberal” groups it sounds like they want their view of history to be taught…so is their view correct? It sounds like the pendulum is just swinging the other way and this will continue depending on who’s in power. It shouldn’t be this way, but who has the answer?

A horrible piece of legislation. The American Public has a wide view of what the Constitution means and how it is to be interpreted. Students should be free to debate the issues and make their own decisions. The Legislature is wasting their time in meddling with curriculum issues and in trying to mandate their “correct interpretation of the Constitution and of historical events.” There are no “correct” interpretations, just differing viewpoints that need to be argued and debated. These arguments and debates happen all the time in the classrooms and in the courtrooms across this nation.

Any attempt by untrained and undereducated politicians or others to dictate “how” history is taught is nothing more than a repetition of what has happened in the old USSR, the Third Reich, North Korea, etc. All of these folks are “thought police”, are generally uninformed themselves, and are a danger to everybody. Hey Ed – how about this? Neither one is a legitimate option. The minute we start lining up for one or the other in lieu of honest inquiry we lose. .

Hey John & Chris-

Guess what! The both of you missed the mark on what I had to say. The great difference between the America and the old USSR, the Third Reich, North Korea et al, is that in America, Glenn Beck and Howard Zinn can write their version of American history. You can’t remove the biases of the authors, educators, publishers and worst, politicians and activists of all political stripes.

This bill is the greatest achievement of Tennessee education since the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Ed: You’re apparently the one who missed my point. There’s nothing of value or worth celebrating in choosing between two versions of “history”, each distorted by somebody’s political agenda. And we are indeed talking about an equivalence to the totalitarian regimes I mentioned because if you or some school board mandates the teaching of any distorted “spin doctor” version of history in a state, that’s the same thing.

Since I generally agree with the proposition that (1) The past controls the future, and (2) The present controls the past, I submit that subtle attempts to rewrite history have seem to be accelerating the past few years. This mostly due to progressive (liberal) thinking in our society in general and teaching in our educational system in particular. Here is a possible example: the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was this past November. In commemoriation of this anniversary, our President chose to read a version that omitted “under God” and, yes, there are some versions that excluded this phrase. But there was only one that was given and we know it as the Gettysburg Address. Presumming the President had his choice of which version to read, why the one that didn’t have “under God”? The President’s animus toward religion is generally known, but that’s not my point with regards to rewriting history. I could envision a Lincoln Memorial in DC someday, that had the ‘official and corrected government version of the Gettysburg Address without the mention of God as authoritatively read by our President on it’s 150th Anniversary at some future date. The rewrite of this piece of history (the past) conceivably began last November (the present) that will be subsequently taught in our progressive educational system to our children who may at some point (the future) want to correct this error at this major historical site. After all, it may be claimed, since there were no video cams, iPhones or digital recorders around on November 19, 1863, who knows if Lincoln said “under God” or not?

I recently read in the January volume of Imprimis an article by Charles R. Keslar from his speech on Oct. 21, 2013 of which I would like to point to this small part, “..what we are seeing in our politics these days is not two clashing interpretations of the same Constitution, but increasingly two different Constitutions in conflict: the old Constitution of 1787 and a “living” Constitution that is not just a different approach to the original, but an alternative to it.” He may be right, which makes me think that it’s all the more important that our children are taught our Bill of Rights and Constitution as written, so they may be able to discern the progressive spin that constitutes a “living” one. It certainly appears that vigilance is called for these days and I can’t find fault with the Tennessee legislature for doing just that.

while i agree that this proposed legislation is wrong headed, i can also say after having attended public school and community college that the opposite has been true for many many years. history is taught from such a leftist slant that it’s impossible to get a straight factual version in most classrooms.

so imo, there is a great need to divert away from portraying our country’s events as a giant catalogue of crimes. most instructors are not just left, they are extreme left. i complained to the dean several times about how white men were being continually derided in my history class.

children don’t care enough to engage critical thinking and that’s what makes partisan teaching such a danger…on both the left and the right. i’m not sure what can be done to avoid it.